


Ghost Walk

by Zinnith



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Desert, Families of Choice, Family, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla is missing. Rodney grows more distant for every day. Nothing has gone right in John's life lately. On top of all his other problems, it looks like he's going to have to take a little stroll through the desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Walk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sgamadison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgamadison/gifts).



> For the Sheppard H/C Summer Exchange. For sgamadison, who only deserves the best. I hope this is good enough. Many thanks to bluespirit_star for the quick and excellent beta. All remaining mistakes are my own. Prompt at the end of the story!

John is alone in the bed when he wakes up. He feels disoriented and no more rested than when he fell asleep... how long ago? It can’t have been more than an hour or so. He wants nothing more than to go back to sleep, preferably for a couple of days. Just bury himself under the covers and let the rest of the damn world go on without him for a while. Maybe when he wakes up, everything will be better.

It’s not likely. He has to admit that he probably hasn’t slept as much as he ought lately, but every time he manages to get a few hours of rest, he wakes up feeling even worse. Teyla is still missing and he doesn’t want to sleep away valuable time that he could have spent looking for her instead.

He’s in Rodney’s room, which is probably part of the reason for the strange feeling of displacement. He doesn’t usually fall asleep after; it’s far too risky. A bleary glance at the clock tells him that he needs to get up while it’s still early enough that sneaking out back to his own quarters won’t raise any uncomfortable questions.

But to do that, he needs to start by getting out of bed. If only it wasn’t so hard to move. The sheets are wrinkled and wrapped around his legs and it takes a moment for him to disentangle himself. The room is dark, except for the blueish light of Rodney’s laptop screen.

Rodney’s sitting hunched over the desk, head resting in his hands. At first, John thinks that he’s fallen asleep in front of the computer, but when he shoves the bedcover out of the way and swings his legs over the side, Rodney straightens up and turns around.

“Hey,” he says. He sounds rough and completely exhausted and John suddenly feels incredibly guilty for falling asleep when Rodney so clearly needs it just as much.

John rubs his eyes but they still feel heavy and gritty. “Sorry for...” _Sleeping while you work your ass off as usual_ , he doesn’t say. Instead he motions to the bed and the tangled sheets. “You should’ve woken me up.”

Rodney swivels around on his chair, leans forward with his elbows on his knees. He’s showered and he’s dressed in sweatpants and a fresh t-shirt. John wants nothing more than to drag him back into bed, curl up behind his back and bury his face in his neck, losing himself in the scent of hypoallergenic soap and clean skin

“You looked tired,” Rodney says and then glances back over his shoulder, to the laptop that’s still running on the desk. “I had, um, I had some work I needed to get done before the mission tomorrow and...” he trails off.

John grabs a sheet and wraps it around his waist while he hunts down his clothes that ended up all over the floor earlier, suddenly protective of his own bare skin. He can count the times they’ve had sex this past few weeks on one hand and when they do, it’s always quick and frantic, like they need to get if over with as fast as possible before someone catches them having a moment to themselves. John closes his eyes as an image of Teyla springs unbidden to his mind. She looks disapproving in a way she rarely does in real life. He chases it away, finds his pants, and fumbles them on.

“What are you working on?” he asks Rodney while he looks for his socks. He’s sure he had two of them when he got here.

Rodney gets a deer-in-the-headlights expression and quickly turns around to shut the laptop. “Nothing important, really, just... stuff. You know. Stuff that needs to get done. Are you, um, leaving?”

“Yeah,” John answers and finds the other sock. He’s pretty sure he knows what Rodney’s been doing, but that is a conversation he doesn’t want to have right now. “Early day tomorrow. Who knows, we might even find something.”

His attempt at positive thinking falls flat to the floor. Rodney stands up and rubs his palms on the legs of his pants. “I’m, I’m headed for the lab. Something I have to check up, and, and, there’s this project, very important.”

It’s almost painful to watch him stutter through the explanation and the lies - John knows where he’s going and it’s not the lab. But that’s one more thing they don’t talk about.

“Okay,” he says, pretending he believes Rodney. “Get some sleep after that, okay? I need you sharp tomorrow.”

“I will, I promise. And you too, by the way. You should sleep, I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess. So. See you tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.” Rodney rubs his hands together, like he’s trying to work up some enthusiasm, but he only ends up looking nervous and uncomfortable. “Bright and early, ready to go explore Tatooine!”

The Star Wars reference gets the faint smile it deserves. Rodney leans in for a kiss, hesitating, and John allows their lips to brush together, just a quick peck. He’s pretty sure he won’t be able to stop himself if either of them goes for more. These brief stolen moments are the most he can allow himself right now. It doesn’t matter how much he wants to grab Rodney and deepen the kiss, wants to stay the night for once, lose himself in Rodney’s body and forget how shitty everything is. They won’t find Teyla that way.

Rodney heads for the lab, where he will double back once John is out of sight and sneak down to the stasis room instead. John goes back to his room where he will lie most of the night and stare at the ceiling, mulling over all the mistakes he’s made lately.

They _have_ to find something tomorrow. It’s been too long without any good news and sooner or later something, someone, is going to break.

* * *

“Oh, wonderful,” Rodney says. “A desert. Michael couldn’t have chosen a planet with a little less carcinogenic climate for his hideout?”

John looks out over the landscape. The gate sits on top of a steep slope and below it is only brownish-red sand as far as the eye can see. The air is shimmering with heat, heavy and hard to breathe. ”I hope you brought enough sunscreen, buddy.”

“Sure the jumpers won’t work?” Ronon asks, glaring at the inhospitable terrain like it has offered him a personal insult.

“Oh, sure they will, I just spent half an hour of the mission briefing explaining in great detail exactly why the atmosphere here will wreak absolute havoc on the navigational systems as a great big joke!” Rodney shoots back. “Seriously, do you not get enough sleep during the night? I know _I_ don’t, and even I can manage to stay awake for a simple meeting.”

John sighs and wishes for the millionth time that Teyla was here. Then again, if they knew where Teyla was, there would be no reason for this trip in the first place. “Come on, guys. Let’s do this. Rodney, you said we wouldn’t have to walk?”

“Do you think I would be here if we had to walk?” Rodney says testily. “I like my handsome visage melanoma free, thank you very much.” He studies his tablet and then scans the ground in front of the gate. “I have no idea why the ancients decided to build this outpost in the middle of the desert, but at least they were good enough to provide us with transportation. It should be right here somewhere...”

Rodney steps away from the gate, uses his foot to sweep away some of the sand and then crouches down to brush the dirt off a slightly raised plate on the ground. “Ah, here it is. Now I just have to find...” He pushes the plate down. “...the mechanism. There we are!”

Somewhere underground there's a faint _click_ and a large portion of the ground in front of Rodney gives off a blueish glow, barely discernible in the bright sunlight. The sand is swept away to reveal a metal square lined with ancient writing set in the ground.

“It’s a transport platform!” Rodney crows triumphantly. “It’s actually of a similar design to the transporters back in Atlantis, only this one is only connected to two specific places. There’s one platform here and another one at the outpost. It should activate once we step up on it.”

“You sure about that?” Ronon asks, eyeing the platform suspiciously.

Rodney stands up and tucks his tablet back inside his jacket. His shoulders do a nervous little shrug, apparently without his leave. “Well, according to the database, that is what _should_ happen. Bearing in mind that the Ancients haven’t been here for ten thousand years, and the last person to use the platform might very well have been Michael...”

“You go first,” Ronon says.

“Me? Excuse me? Why should _I_ have to go first? I was just going to suggest that _you_...,”

” _I'm_ going first,” John interrupts. If the transporter turns out to be malfunctioning, he's the one who should take the risk. “Let’s focus here, okay guys? This is the best lead we have to finding Teyla.”

Both Rodney and Ronon look at him and then at each other and away, the bickering abruptly finished. John closes his eyes for a brief moment and takes a deep breath, wishing again that Teyla was here. Nothing works right without her. They’re wearing on each other, nothing in between to smooth the sharp edges. Rodney is always irritable, but has become almost impossible to live with lately. Ronon seems to devote all his time to turning silence, violence and intimidation into an art form. And John... John doesn’t know what he is. He feels lost, full of doubt, like he’s making all the wrong decisions. The team is lopsided, all frantic activity and the desperate need to push on and no restraint to shore them up.

“Might be nothing,” Ronon says, breaking the short silence. “It’s a long shot.” All that led them here was a whispered rumour and a vague memory Carson - the clone - no, _Carson_ , dammit, had managed to relay before they had been forced to put him into stasis.

John quickly shuts that train of thought down. “Right now, it’s the only shot we have,” he says. “Okay, I'm going for it.”

With the transporters back in Atlantis, you just enter at one point and exit at another without even feeling the effects. This ride isn’t nearly as smooth. The moment John sets foot on the platform, it’s like he can feel his body actually being picked apart and put back together again, all in the wink of an eye. It’s a deeply disturbing feeling and he can’t stop a shudder when they’re through at the other side and steps down from the corresponding platform.

“Whoa. That was different.” He steps down to the floor and keys his radio. ”It's safe, guys. Come on through.”

A moment later, Rodney and Ronon are standing on the platform. Ronon looks a little wigged out at the experience and Rodney is busy patting arms and legs, seemingly making sure all his body parts has made the journey.

They have materialised at one end of what looks like an empty hallway. It’s dark and John lets the light of his P-90 sweep over the interior. There are two doors, one at each end of the room. When he reaches out with his mind he can feel a warm familiar humming, similar to that of Atlantis. This is different though, weaker and patchier, like it comes and goes in waves. John can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with this place, but it’s too insubstantial to put words on.

“No life signs,” Rodney reports, holding the LSD out for John to see. “It doesn’t mean there won’t be any hibernating Wraith of course. I don’t have to remind you of our track record with deserts, do I?”

John steps over to one of the doors. “Don’t worry, McKay,” he says. “If we run into any Super Wraiths, I promise we’ll go right back home.”

The door mechanism is similar to the ones in Atlantis. John runs a hand over it and it slides open with a weird scraping sound. On the other side is sand, sand and even more sand. The heat is oppressive, even here in the shelter of the building.

John closes the door again and turns around. “Ronon, try the other one.”

The second door opens with a similar scraping sound, like sand from outside has gotten into the mechanisms.

“Are they supposed to do that?” John asks Rodney.

“Ten thousand years old, remember? It’s not like they’ve had a little ancient custodian hanging around since then, oiling the hinges for your comfort, Colonel.”

More darkness lies behind this door. As they step through John reaches out again and thinks, ‘ _A little light, please?’_ Nothing happens at first, so he does it again, concentrating a little harder this time. Fluorescent lighting comes to life, flickers in and out a couple of times, and then holds steady. It’s a dim glow at best and only serves to enhance the spooky feeling of the abandoned building.

At least there's enough light to see by. They have just entered a room with walls lined with consoles. In the middle is a deep hole in the floor, surrounded by a perfect circle of a steel railing. There are two other doors that seem to lead deeper into the building. John steps up to the railing and peers down, but there’s nothing but deep, black darkness to be seen.

“What were they doing here anyway?” he asks.

Rodney is already digging in his backpack for equipment to connect his tablet to one of the consoles. “According to the database, they were drilling for something. The records are a little unclear, God forbid Ancient scientists could actually keep proper lab notes or anything. In any case, the project failed and they closed the place down.” He picks a console, hooks up the tablet and then draws a finger through the deep layer of dust and sand on top of it. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a long time,” he says. “I hate to be Mr Negativity here, but I don't think this is going to lead anywhere.”

Seeing the state of the building, John has to admit that it’s not likely. There hadn’t been much hope to begin with, but it feels like Teyla slips a little bit farther out of their reach with each dead end. “Let’s go check out the rest of it,” he tells Ronon, swallowing the disappointment.

They leave Rodney to sift through the station’s database and go to make sure the rest of the building is clear. One of the doors from the main room opens into another hallway lined with several rooms. It looks like it used to be the residential area. There are a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms, a dining area, a large room that appears to have been used as a gym. Everything is empty, with no signs of having been disturbed for the past few millennia.

The other door leads to a large number of storage rooms. Most of them are empty, others are full of junk, the kind of things you leave behind when you’re moving out. There is a lot of undisturbed dust here too, swirling around their feet as they move. Ronon picks up some kind of broken-looking ancient device and turns it over in one large hand.

“You think McKay’s gonna want to take any of this back?"

John shrugs. “Ask him. I don’t even know what that _is_.”

Ronon shakes the thing and frowns at the rattling sound it makes before he puts it back down where he found it.

They go through all the rooms and closets they can find but encounter nothing but dust and disrepair. John sighs and waves goodbye to the little glimmer of hope he’s been carrying around since they stepped through the gate.

“There’s nothing here,” Ronon says, echoing his thoughts. “Hasn’t been for a long time.”

“Looks that way. Back to square one, I guess.”

John feels like hitting something, kicking and screaming. Now that he comes to think of it, this would be the perfect place. He can almost imagine what it would feel like to turn one of these junk rooms upside down and tear it apart. A little therapeutic violence. And won’t that make him look like the poster child of emotional health?

“You okay?”

John hesitates. Ronon has clearly held off asking until they were alone for a reason, to give John a chance to give an honest answer if he wants to. He’s tried to keep up appearances since Teyla was taken, to not let on how horribly lost and confused and scared he is every hour of every day. There’s no one around he can really talk to. McKay is busy enough with his own pain and the ever-present strain of keeping the city running, and Keller and Carter aren’t quite family yet. Teyla has always been the one who seems to know exactly how he feels without the need for any bothersome words. John should have remembered that Ronon is a lot brighter and a lot more perceptive than most people give him credit for, and it’s tempting, so very tempting to give in and let the mask fall for a second. But if he does, he’s not sure that he’ll be able to put it back on afterwards.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “I’m fine.”

“Hm.” Ronon sounds unconvinced. “What about McKay?”

What about him? John isn’t sure. Rodney hasn’t said anything, but he’s not exactly his usual self either. Losing Teyla has hit them all hard, and then on top of that, they found Carson just to lose him all over again. They don’t speak about it, but John knows that when he’s not spending his nights sleeping draped over a bench in his lab, he spends them in the stasis room, carrying on rambling conversations with the frozen image of Carson in the chamber. He’s certainly not spending them with John, not lately, and John isn’t sure if he even minds all that much. It’s not like he needs any more distractions and Rodney would probably be better off without him anyway.

“I guess he’s... he’s holding up good,” John says. “Considering.”

Except for all the databases full of medical research John has caught him going through over and over again, the kind of material he usually snorts at and dismisses as voodoo. Yeah, McKay is holding up just _fine_.

The team is breaking apart and there isn’t a damn thing John can do about it. It has been weeks already and they have wasted their time hunting ghosts and following trails gone cold ages ago. Dammit, why did they have to go for the retrovirus experiment in the first place? It doesn’t matter how you look at it; Michael is the Atlantis expedition's creation. If not for them, he wouldn’t exist. John should’ve put a stop to it. He should’ve done a lot of things, starting with not waking up the Wraith.

“You’re taking on a lot, Sheppard,” Ronon says. He puts a hand on John’s shoulder, large and warm. Steady. John has to fight hard to resist leaning into the touch, just for a moment. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

John swallows, closed his eyes to stop them from burning (too much dust in the air, that’s all) and tries to get a hold on his emotions, stuff them back down where they belong. “I know,” he manages, finding to his surprise that his voice sounds almost normal. “Thanks, big guy.”

“No trouble.”

“So, we done with the manly heart-to-heart talk?”

“I think we are.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

They make one last sweep of the storage area just to be sure they haven’t missed anything, but the place is almost tauntingly empty. John can’t quite shake the feeling of wrongness that has been with him since they arrived. It’s stronger now, the walls and the floors almost vibrating with it. He taps his radio, suddenly worried over how long it’s been since they heard anything from Rodney. They probably shouldn’t have left him alone.

“McKay? Did you find anything yet?”

There is a brief pause and then Rodney’s distracted voice echoes in his ear. “Don’t you think I would’ve told you if I had? Now shush, I’m working here.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re heading back to you.”

The relief of knowing that Rodney’s okay is shortlived. “Um... guys?” McKay’s voice is a lot more anxious this time. “Could you maybe hurry it up a little. I think... no, I’m almost a hundred percent sure that we’re going to want to get out of here very soon.”

John and Ronon exchange a look and John reaches for his radio. “How come?”

“There’s some kind of power buildup, I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s getting worse fast. I’m working to reverse it right now, but just in case, could you... oh, no.”

There’s silence, save for the sound of Rodney’s fingers tapping frantically on a keyboard.

“McKay?” John prompts, breaking into a light run. Ronon follows right at his heels.

“Yes, yes, still here. Oh, _crap_. Get back here _now_ , Colonel!”

It only takes them minutes to get back to the control room, but it’s the longest few minutes John can remember. Halfway there, the floor really does start to vibrate, like a miniature earthquake. It feels like the entire building is trembling, along with John’s teeth. Something is seriously wrong. Dammit, John should have said something earlier, no matter how stupid it sounded. Story of his life.  
When they arrive, Rodney is sweating and red in the face. He’s hurrying to disconnect all his equipment from the computer consoles while keeping one eye one a readout from one of the monitors. It’s too far away for John too see any details, but he knows enough to realise that all those red graphs can’t be good.

“What too you so long?” Rodney shouts, voice high and tight. He’s clearly struggling to keep his panic in check. “What did you do, go sightseeing? We only have a couple of minutes here.”

“Booby trap?” Ronon asks.

Rodney shakes his head and stuffs the laptop and the cables back into his backpack. “No, I don’t think so. It looks like a flaw in the design of the building, probably why it was abandoned in the first place. The energy output had to be monitored and adjusted manually, and when we came here and activated the systems, we inadvertently opened the floodgates, so to speak, and why are we standing here discussing this when any second now the whole place cold _blow up?_ ”

“The platform,” John decides, opening the door. “Come on.”

Rodney zips his bag shut and darts for the door. Ronon follows and John brings up the rear, throwing one last look at the control room. The floor is shaking now, like something huge and hungry is building underneath, and it makes it hard to keep his feet.

The control panel beside the door starts giving off blue sparks as they pass through it. The smell of ozone is heavy in the air and John feels the hairs on his arms and neck stand on edge. The transportation platform is crackling with energy. It looks far from safe to use, but they’re running out of time.

Rodney gets there first, stops short just on the edge of the platform and turns around. “Come on, come on, come on!”

The earth rumbles then and the entire installation shakes and shifts and John feels the floor disappear out from under his feet. He ends up on his hands and knees, disoriented for a second, before he manages to get up again and keep running. Sparks are flying around him from the door and from the transporter and it hits him like a punch in the gut that he’s not going to make it in time.  
“Go!” he shouts to Ronon. “Get out of here!”

Ronon turns his head, takes in the distance between John and the platform, the control pad that’s beginning to give off smoke, and the next moment he’s grabbed McKay by the shoulders and dragged him bodily onto the transporter platform. It activates instantly and the two of them flicker in and out of existence a few times, like the picture on a badly tuned TV.

The last thing John sees before they disappear altogether is Rodney’s face, mouth open in a wordless scream, arm stretched out toward him. He’s so close their fingers are almost touching. The next moment they’re gone. The control pad sputters, the platform goes dark.

After that, all John remembers is fire.

* * *

The smell of smoke wakes him. It stings his eyes and nose and he wants nothing more than to sink back into the darkness, but something keeps pushing insistently on the edge of his consciousness.

Teyla.

Desert planet. They had been looking for Teyla, and then... it’s hazy.

John blinks, tries to cough some of the smoke out of his lungs and clear his eyes. Moving hurts, too much for him to just ignore it and tuck it away in the back of his mind. His ears are ringing, his head is about to turn itself inside out, and something seems to be wrong with his right shoulder. It throbs with a sharp pain and turning over on his back nearly makes him black out again. He stays there for a moment or two, tries to catch his breath without starting to cough again. Then he manages to drag himself into a sitting position, using his good arm for support. His head spins and the tears are streaming from his eyes. When he raises his head, he finds out where all the smoke is coming from.

The compound is on fire. John can see the flames lick out of the entrance he can vaguely remember throwing himself though... how long ago? Minutes? Hours? The sun is still high in the sky so he can’t have been out for long. The sand around him is littered with metal scrap, burned pieces of ancient crystals, frayed wires, the twisted, scarred remains of a door panel. He remembers the control room, the shaking floor, McKay’s barely contained panic...

Shit, _McKay_.

John is on his feet before he even has time to consider how much it’s going to hurt to stand. Once upright, he has to close his eyes for a moment as his shoulder and arm explodes in agony. There is no time for that, he needs to get moving.

“Rodney!” he shouts, staggering closer to the burning building. “Ronon! You guys okay?”

There’s no answer. The heat hits him like a punch to the face. Trying to go back inside isn’t an option. Not that it would do much good anyway.

John screws his eyes shut against the smoke, tries to _think_. His head is pounding like a jackhammer and it feels wobbly on his neck, like it’s about to fall right off his shoulders. When he raises his hand to the back of his head, he finds a sore bump. His fingers comes away bloody. Something must have hit him.

He can only hope that Rodney and Ronon got through okay. There’s no way to tell. It’s doubtful if the transporter was still functional and even if it was, the platform on John’s end is inside the building that is currently on fire.

“Let’s face it, John,” he mutters to himself. “You’re pretty much screwed here.”

Okay. Time to make a plan. He can’t stay here, the heat from the fire is quickly becoming unbearable and he has already inhaled more smoke than is probably good for him.

He tries to remember the geographic data, digs around in his fractured memory until the facts float up to the surface. The terrain between the gate and the outpost is all desert, deep wadis and wind-worn cliffs. Under normal circumstances, with proper gear and supplies, a hike like that would be unpleasant. Now, injured as he is, it’s going to be a nightmare.

It isn’t like he has much choice. Except for the burning wreckage of the ancient outpost, there is no shelter around to be seen. If Rodney and Ronon got through the transporter okay and were able to return to Atlantis, they are probably mounting a rescue mission right now. If not...

Shit. He can’t wait. He _has_ to get back. Maybe their signatures are still stored in the transporter’s buffer, maybe Zelenka and Carter can find a way to get them out.

John steps away from the building and slogs through the sand, kicking at the shrapnel from the explosion as he goes. The sun hasn’t moved at all since first woke up. How long are the days on this world anyway? He tries to remember, but the number flits away, out of his reach.

“Great,” he tells himself again. It isn’t like there is anyone else around to talk to. “You have a head injury and you’re trying to make decisions that will be vital to your continued survival. Good luck with that.”

He can’t see anything around that seems to be of any use. A quick search of his pockets yields his sunglasses (thank God for _that_ ), a couple of powerbars and some field dressings. His shoulder is throbbing mercilessly but it doesn’t feel dislocated. There’s a fair bit of swelling though, and when he prods the front of the shoulder, over the clavicle, he can feel a raised bump that hurts like hell when his fingers skims over it. Broken collarbone, most likely. Well, this is going to be fun.  
“No time like the present,” he mutters, turns his back on the burning compound, and sets off in the direction of the gate.

* * *

Water is the first concern. He has a mostly full canteen but in this heat, it isn’t going to last long. He tries to decide if it would be best to drink most of it at once or if he should ration. Going all that way without anything to even wet his mouth isn’t going to be pleasant. Okay, rationing it is.

John takes a deep swallow and then sloshes some water around between his teeth to try to get the taste of smoke out of his mouth. It isn’t working. His throat still feels raw, and he has to try to control his breathing unless he wants to start coughing again. He’s used the bandages to immobilise his arm the best he can, but every step jars the injured limb and the pain is wearing on him fast. McKay had the first-aid kit in his backpack and all John has is some Tylenol. He’s already dry-swallowed two but it’s barely taking the edge off and it’s only going to get worse.

He knew he was making a stupid decision even as he started to walk. All his desert survival classes had been clear - find shelter and water. Only there is no shelter around and he has no time to look for water so John had figured his best bet was to walk for a bit, see if he could find some shade, and then continue once the sun went down.

He’s left his tac-vest behind; too much unnecessary weight to carry. He must have dropped the P-90 inside the compound where it’s doing him absolutely no good. He still has his sidearm, but hopes he won’t run into something that will merit its use. Had there been anything in the briefing about the local fauna? John can’t remember, but keeps a close eye to the ground anyway to make sure he’s not putting his feet down on top of some potentially poisonous little critter.

The sun is like a heavy weight on his shoulders, pressing him down into the ground. At least the sand isn’t so deep here, but his thighs and calves still burn with every step. His skin is already turning red and John takes a moment to wish that he’d thought to steal some of Rodney’s sunscreen. At this rate, he’s going to be fried to a crisp before he makes it back to the gate. _If_ he makes it. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking and his watch must have broken when the building blew up.

The sunglasses provides at least a little protection from the sun and he's ripped the back out of his uniform shirt to wrap around his head in an improvised turban, keeping the sleeves on over the t-shirt underneath. No matter how tempting it is to lose as much clothing as possible, he knows he has to shield his bare skin.

His stomach is about to start devouring itself, and he feels almost sick with it. He still has the powerbars, but with so little water, he can’t risk eating. Digesting the food will use up fluids he can't afford to lose.

How far back to the gate? John has no idea and there are no real landmarks to speak of. This is beginning to feel like a worse idea with every step. He wishes he could know for sure what happened to Rodney and Ronon. If he only had a way to know they were okay, he wouldn’t be nearly as worried.

But right now, he’s alone. He might have lost his entire team and he has no idea how to even deal with that thought.

The only thing he can do is keep walking.

* * *

John knows he’s in trouble when he looks over his shoulder and sees the pale, withered figure of Colonel Sumner following him. The Colonel is not speaking, not doing anything in particular. He’s just there, trailing after John like a morbid imitation of a puppy.

At first, John tries to just ignore him. Head trauma, dehydration, it isn’t a big step from there to hallucinations.

“Thought that was supposed to be McKay’s schtick,” he mutters to himself, and throws a glare backwards, where Sumner’s wraith-fed face with those horrible dull, dead eyes won’t leave him alone.

It isn’t fair. McKay gets trapped in a jumper with a concussion and hallucinates a smart, beautiful woman. John just has to get stuck with the ghost of failures past instead. There are a whole lot of people he’d rather have as a travelling companion at the moment.

“It doesn’t even has to be a hot girl,” he says conversationally to Sumner, who doesn’t look amused. “Just someone a little more friendly than you. Is that too much to ask?”

Sumner doesn’t answer, he just keeps walking a few steps behind, his emaciated skeletal form fading in and out in a shimmering of heat. John stubbornly keeps going forward, doing his best not to turn around and talk to the man.

In hindsight, it was probably stupid to keep going. John knows he should have stopped somewhere and waited for nightfall, should have done his best to rig up some kind of shelter. He’s wasted precious energy and fluids struggling on like he’s been doing. But Rodney and Ronon... he needs to find out what had happened to them and he needs to find out fast. Hopefully in a few hours the sun will set, the temperature will drop and the journey will get a little easier.

He stops, takes another swallow of water, and shakes the canteen to find out how much is left. Maybe a third. At this rate, it will take a miracle to get him back to the gat. John can only hope that Rodney is still alive and in Atlantis, working on a brilliant rescue plan.

“Rodney’s good at miracles,” John tells Sumner, despite his resolution to pretend the pale shade of the Colonel isn’t there. “He always comes through in the end. I wish I was... wish I could do that.” He stops, turns around and finally meets Sumner’s eyes. “The only thing I seem to be good at is being too late.”

Sumner blinks slowly but remains silent. John looks away again and keeps walking, keeps thinking about how he single-handedly managed to screw up an entire galaxy within 24 hours of setting foot in it. There aren’t a lot of people who can put that on their resume.

There probably aren’t a lot a people with a list of screw-ups as long as John’s either. Rodney’s right to stay away. He deserves better. Then John remembers that he doesn’t even know if Rodney is still alive and wishes that he could have taken the time, sometime during the past few weeks, to tell Rodney exactly how important he’s become. That sometimes, being around him is like coming home. They don’t do those kinds of talks, never have, but John can’t stand the thought that Rodney might have died not knowing.

The next time he looks over his shoulder, Sumner is gone. John catches himself almost missing him.  
* * *

The sun is like a burning living thing, intent on sapping every last ounce of energy from him. John’s face stings with sunburn and his lips are dry and cracked when he runs his tongue over them. He reaches a steep incline and stops for a moment at the bottom, staring up the ridge. He doesn’t want to climb it. He wants to lie down right here and do nothing at all until he dies from heatstroke or he gets rescued, whatever happens first.

There’s still some water left. John has tried to save it, but the smoke he inhaled earlier is still irritating his lungs, and a swallow of water every now and then is pretty much the only thing that’ll stop him from coughing until he pukes. In temperatures like this, he knows he ought to drink half a liter every hour but he has no way to tell the time and once the canteen is empty, he’ll be out of water altogether.

The slope in front of him seems impossible to climb. Then again, doing the impossible has ended up as something of a trademark of the Atlantis expedition. It would be stupid to just lie down and wait to die. That’s not the way John Sheppard does things.

He starts to climb and immediately regrets it. The sand is looser here and for every step forward it feels like he’s sliding two steps back.

“Maybe you should just turn around and walk back down again,” Lieutenant Ford says.

John looks up from his shoes. Ford stands in front of him, arms crossed over his chest and smiling. His face is unmarred and both eyes are normal. John’s heart does a twisty little thing in his chest and it almost hurts worse than his shoulder and his head and the godawful sunburn.

“Aiden,” he greets the new ghost. They never used first names with each other back when Ford was still himself, but it doesn’t matter now.

“You’re getting good at losing team members, Colonel,” Ford says, shaking his head with something that looks like pity.

John ignores him and trudges on uphill and Ford steps out of his way and flickers out of sight, only to reappear again a little further up.

“I mean, it’s not just me,” the Lieutenant continues. “Doctor Beckett and Doctor Weir, and now you managed to lose Teyla. How do you do it?”

“We looked for you,” John pants. He doesn’t have enough breath to talk, but he can’t keep quiet either.

“Sure you did,” Ford agrees. “Only, you seemed to be in quite a hurry to replace me. Got anyone lined up to take Teyla’s place already?”

It stings, more than John wants to admit, and he fights the urge to try to convince Ford that it wasn’t like that, not at all. Ronon wasn’t a replacement, he was a necessary addition.

“No one’s taking Teyla’s place,” he says instead. “We’re getting her back.”

He has to be halfway up the hill, he thinks, though he doesn’t want to turn his head and look back, afraid to discover that he’s only made it a few feet. His legs are trembling and his shoulder is a bright red point of pain that he can’t ignore. Usually, pain is something he’s learned to put away where it can’t bother him, but this is too persistent. One small broken bone shouldn’t hurt this much.

“So what’s the plan, Colonel?” Ford asks. “Do you even have one or are you just winging it as usual and hoping for a lucky break?” He’s moved a little ahead again, seemingly without effort. John realises that he’ll never be within reach.

“I have a plan,” John says. His tongue is dry like sandpaper in his mouth and he has to take another mouthful of water to be able to continue. “We have our ears to the ground all over the galaxy, sooner or later something will turn up. Our contacts...”

“Don’t you mean _Teyla’s_ contacts?” Ford interrupts. “Face it, Colonel. You’re pretty useless without her, aren’t you?”

John doesn’t want to admit just how right this particular ghost is. Teyla is the reason they haven’t already died messily in some cultural misunderstanding. Without her, they’re nothing but a bunch of bumbling outsiders. Ronon knows the galaxy like the back of his hand but diplomacy is not his strong suit.

“Shut up,” John says, tries to sound forceful and authoritative but it comes out far weaker than he’d like. He’s running out of breath and he’s beginning to think that he might not make it up this damn hill. It rises in front of him like a wall and the top might just as well be a hundred miles away.

“Useless,” Ford echoes, much closer now, and John startles and falls to his knees.

The movement jars his injured shoulder and the pain he’s been trying so hard to ignore shoots through him, takes the last of his breath away. He blacks out for a moment, vision and hearing all but gone, the loud beating of his own heart the only thing he’s aware of.

When he comes back, he’s on hands and knees in the sand and he can’t find the energy or the will to get up again. Dying out here in the middle of nowhere would be stupid, but he might not have a choice any more.

“We looked for you,” he repeats, because he needs this Ford, at least, to know that, no matter how it turned out in real life. “We... I tried.”

“Not hard enough,” Ford says, and then he’s moved again, up to the top of the hill, so very far out of John’s reach.

He resists the urge to sink the rest of the way down to the ground and stay there. He starts to crawl instead, using his good arm to pull himself up and forward. It goes slow and the change in position is not helping the broken collarbone, but he’s moving. It’s going to have to be enough. Every now and then he raises his head enough to catch a glimpse of Ford, waiting at the top.

It takes time and it hurts so much that he’s close to throwing up, but he makes it. When he reaches the top he takes a moment to catch his breath, tries to find enough saliva to spit the blood from his cracked lip out of his mouth, and then looks up again.

Ford is gone. For some reason, it feels like defeat.

John just sits there for a while, waits for his head to stop spinning. When he’s reasonably certain he’s not going to pass out or puke, he climbs to his feet again and keeps going.

* * *

After Ford disappears, John begins to count his steps just to have something to think about other than the fact that his team is currently stuck in a box like Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously dead and alive.

He’s reached one thousand, two hundred and sixteen when he comes across the old burned-out Russian helicopter. The sight makes him blink and scrub his eyes, wondering if he’s collapsed and fallen asleep somewhere along the way, because this is beginning to feel a lot more like a dream than a hallucination. When he opens his eyes again, the chopper is gone, so he decides that he probably isn’t going completely crazy after all.

A hundred and sixty three steps later, Holland materialises, bleeding into the sand. John gives him a glance and blinks again, hoping that he’ll disappear too if he just manages to clear the worst haze out of his eyes, but when he opens his eyes this time, Holland is still there.

“Hey buddy,” John says. “We did this one already, remember?”

Holland grins around a mouthful of bloody teeth. “Are we ever going to get done?”

John thinks about it and then shrugs. “Guess not. You gonna walk on your own this time? I don’t think I’m up to carrying you right now.”

“Nah, not necessary.” Holland stands up and spreads his arms. “I’d offer to return the favour but, you know, I’m not actually real.”

“That’s okay. I’ll make it.” Something’s running down John’s chin. When he wipes at it, his fingers comes away bloody. His lip must’ve split open again. He licks his fingers and then starts to suck at his lip, lapping up the blood. It’s not much, but it’s salty and liquid and better than nothing.

Holland looks doubtful. “Will you really? You never were very good at making smart decisions, Shep. At least not for yourself.”

“Or for anyone else,” John says. The taste of blood is heavy on his tongue and it makes him feel sick, like he swallowed a gallon of it instead of only a few drops.

“Nah. You know what’s the problem with you, buddy?” Holland falls into step with John, limping heavily on his injured leg. “You’ll always do whatever’s best for everybody but yourself.”

John doesn’t have the energy to argue with a dead man so he sets his eyes at the horizon and keeps walking. They go on in silence for a while. John sucks on his lip until it stops bleeding and wonders if he should drink those last mouthfuls of water or hold off a little longer.

“Are we even going in the right direction?” Holland asks.

John glares at him. “Always with the backseat driving.”

He’s lost count of his steps so he starts over again from the beginning. It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of what’s going on. The heat cramps hit some time ago and every now and then his muscles contract into excruciatingly painful spasms. At least it’s something to take his mind off the pain in his shoulder.

His legs feel like overcooked noodles and it’s getting harder and harder just to stay on his feet. He’s been walking downhill for a while and the ground seems to want to slide out from under him for every step. It’s only a matter of time until he falls.

He does, only a few moments later. His legs give out and he falls to his knees, letting out an involuntary cry of pain. His arm is about to fall off, he’s sure of it, and Holland is absolutely no help at all, ghost as he is. John gets up again, takes a few steps and only barely avoids falling flat on his face. He’s stumbling like a drunk and his vision is going weird. He imagines he can see something at the horizon, a large city with towers and spires, small aircrafts buzzing like flies around them.

A few steps more, and his knees buckle again. He reaches out with his good arm to try to catch himself, but it won’t hold his weight and he ends up rolling down, unable to stop himself. His injured shoulder hits the ground and the pain engulfs him, threatens to eat him whole.

It feels like forever, but he finally ends up on his back on the ground. The pain has stolen his breath and his thought and his focus and all he can do is lie there and exist and pray that the flashes of agony will fade.

Holland is standing over him, peering down curiously.

“You know you’re going to die out here, right?”

 _It sure looks that way,_ John wants to say, but he can’t get the words over his lips, his mouth is too dry and he lacks the energy to speak.

John can see Holland shake his head in a pitying motion, before he fades away into a haze.

The sun is a hot burning ball overhead. John closes his eyes and it’s still there, red behind his eyelids, until that fades too and he blacks out.

* * *

He dreams about the ocean, cool waves and the smell of salt. It’s nice at first, like he’s back in Atlantis, sharing a six pack with Rodney on the pier and he can almost taste the cold beer on his tongue, feel it run down his throat to wash away the sand and the smoke. Rodney’s talking, with his mouth and his hands, and John can’t hear what he’s saying but he knows he wants to stay.

Then a wave washes over them, and instead of cold, it’s steaming hot. John makes a grab for Rodney’s hand, but the moment their fingers are about to to touch, Rodney flickers in and out like static and disappears, and John is pulled down by the wave. He’s sinking, and he wonders what will happen first, if he’ll drown or if he’ll boil to death like a crab in a pot.

Eventually, he washes up on a beach and lies there, gasping for breath. Someone’s standing over him and John wishes that whoever it is could at least have the good grace to shade him from the godawful sun.

“So this is what you’ve been doing with your life?”

John recognises the voice. He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know who it is, but he does anyway. Probably some kind of masochistic desire to torment himself.

“Hi Dave,” he croaks, coughs again, and tries to swallow to ease the irritation in his throat. There is no moisture at all in his mouth and he ends up coughing again. “It’s part of the package,” he manages when he finally has enough breath to speak.

The figure looking down at him is a younger version of his brother, still with the awkward skinniness of youth. He’s wearing slacks and a button down and looks almost insolently cool and crisp in the desert heat.

“Seems like you picked the wrong package,” Dave says with the familiar little sneer John remembers so well. He’d seen traces of it the last time they met, at Dad’s funeral, and he has no doubt Dave is still capable of the real thing. Past Dave just never even bothered to hide it.

John closes his eyes. He has spent a very long time trying to bury the memories of all the fights they had before he signed up for the Air Force. Him against Dad and Dave, always two against one. There was no way he could ever win, so he just packed his bags and left instead. God, it is over twenty years ago but right now, seeing his little brother like this, it feels like yesterday.

“Picked the one that was right for me,” he mutters. “Couldn’t let Dad decide everything.”

“So you ran away instead.” Dave lets out an condescending little snort. John hated that obnoxious snort when they were growing up and it still makes him want to punch Dave hard in the face. “You always ran away, Johnny. From your family, from your wife, from _Earth._ Who does that? What kind of brother does that?”

John blinks up against the sky. He never told Dave about Atlantis so he shouldn’t know that. Then Dave shimmers above him, flickers in and out of existence for a moment, and solidifies again and John remembers that his brother isn’t really here.

“I had to,” he whispered. “I wanted to fly. I had to fly.”

The sky had been the only thing that made life worth living back then. The only thing that had offered a tiny little bit of freedom from the restraints of the cage he’d been born into.

Dave leans over him, hands on his thighs. “Maybe I wanted to fly too, did you ever think of that?”

John tries to swallow again, fails and chokes and presses his eyes shut. Dave was always the good son, the one who did what he was told without making a fuss. What dreams had he been forced to give up just so John could have his clear blue skies?

“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“A little late for that now, isn’t it?” Dave says, and John can hear the sneer creep back into his voice. “Your choice, Johnny boy. Now you get to live with the consequences.”

He tries to remind himself that this isn’t really his brother, just the image of him John has been carrying around in his head since he left home, but it’s so hard. He’s been living with this Dave a lot longer than the man Dave grew up to be. After the wake and the replicator and the funeral, the two of them talked for a long time and cleared the air of a lot of old crap. There is no way to change what happened in the past, but they agreed to at least try to mend some fences. Since then, they have exchanged a few e-mails, half-hearted attempts to keep in touch, but John can’t talk about half the stuff he’s doing and Dave is busy running the company. The patented Sheppard family strategy of dealing with the difficult subjects by pretending they don’t exist doesn’t seem to be effective in this particular case.

John can’t stop thinking about the questions he never asked. The questions he might never get a chance to ask now, if he gets himself killed out here. He’ll never get to know what it was like for Dave when John left. He’ll never get to share the memories he still has of Mom. He’ll never get the chance to ask, to _beg_ his brother not to work so hard, to remember to spend time with his daughters and not make Dad’s mistakes all over again. He’ll never get the chance to apologise. What if he dies with Dave still resenting him?

“I never meant for it to be like this,” he whispers, voice broken and raw. His eyes are burning behind closed lids. If he wasn’t so dehydrated, he’d be crying.

Dave doesn’t answer and when John opens his eyes, his brother is gone and he’s alone again with nothing but the merciless sun for company.

“Wait,” he croaks. “Please don’t go. I want...” He runs out of words, has no idea what it is he wants. It’s not like it matters anyway. Since when has ever gotten anything he wanted? Every time he does, it just ends badly.

He should get up. It feels like he’s been walking forever and the gate can’t be that far away now. Maybe it’ll turn up behind the next dune. John shifts, tries to rise on his good elbow. His shoulder explodes in pain again and he can actually _feel_ the broken edges of his collarbone move under the skin and slip even further out of alignment. His stomach makes a violent somersault, he has to breathe deep to keep from throwing up, and that makes him start coughing again, which intensifies the pain in his shoulder until the circle feeds itself.

Once he manages to catch his breath again, he’s too exhausted to move. He tries to keep his eyes open, but it’s a losing battle. Between one scattered thought and the next, that boiling hot wave washes over him again, and he’s lost to the darkness of the roaring ocean.

* * *

“John, wake up.”

Who? Dave? No, it can’t be. Dave left, just like Sumner and Ford and Holland.

“You need to get up and keep going. If you do not, you will die.”

John knows that voice. He’s heard it in his dreams for weeks. But it’s impossible, it can’t be...

He opens his eyes. “Teyla?” His voice is all but gone now, only a weak whisper of sound makes it over his torn and cracked lips.

She’s sitting by his side, smiling down at him. One hand is resting on her round belly and the other one is hovering over John’s face. He can almost feel the cool caress of her palm.

“Yes, John, it is me. You must get up.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You have to, or you will die here.”

It’s so fantastic to see her again that he can barely pay attention to what she’s saying. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry I didn’t find you earlier.”

Teyla leans down over him. A strand of hair that was tucked behind her air falls forward, almost brushing his forehead. He can’t take his eyes off her.

“You still haven’t found me. Now get up, you have very little time left.”

He never could refuse Teyla anything. She coaxes and encourages him until he’s managed to get into a sitting position. Everything hurts, every bone and muscle and sinew in his body, and his head is spinning so badly that he can barely remain upright.

“Do you have any water left?” Teyla asks.

Water? He can’t remember. John reaches for his canteen and shakes it. There’s a sloshing noise, a few mouthfuls left on the bottom. It takes a long time to get it open, but then there is water trickling down his throat. It’s not much, just enough to wet his mouth, and it’s warm and tastes like plastic, but it revives him a little bit.

“That is good.” Teyla stands and holds out a hand. “Now, you must get up. The gate is near.”

John looks up at her, doubtful. “I’ll never make it.”

“One step at the time,” she smiles. “Start by getting up.”

It takes a tremendous effort of will to get his spent muscles to move again, but he makes it to his knees, and then to his feet, stands there swaying for a minute or two. He can see the meandering trail of his footsteps in the sand in the direction he came from.

Teyla takes a few steps onward and then turns around, waiting for him to follow. “Come,” she says. “We must go this way.”

John forces his feet to move. One step at the time. “I’m coming,” he says. “Just don’t leave again.” He’s not sure he would be able to take her disappearing.

She smiles, that gentle, compassionate smile he’s been missing for so long. “Do not worry, John. I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

The simple task of putting one foot in front of the other is getting increasingly difficult. If it wasn’t for Teyla, John would have keeled over ages ago, but she keeps her promise and stays close, helps him keep his focus.

He’s pretty sure he’s imagining things that aren’t there, dark, wraith-like shadows out of the corner of his eye. The ocean keeps roaring back and forth in his ears and every now and then he gets the impression that he’s not walking in sand, but wading through ankle-deep water. If he closes his eyes, he can almost smell the salt and hear the cries of the birds they have reluctantly decided to call gulls. There’s a shallow pool on one of the smaller piers, just deep enough to dip your feet in to cool off after a hot day. It’s always fun to splash some water in Rodney’s direction and watch him yelp and jump out of the way.

“John.” Teyla’s gentle voice wakes him and he blinks his eyes open and finds that he’s veered off a bit.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m awake.” John adjusts his path. His skin is hot and tight and feels like it’s going to burst open. The little water he had earlier wasn’t nearly enough. He’s hit by the sudden thought that he might be dead already, that this is his afterlife. Doomed to walk forever under the punishing sun as payment for his sins.

“They will come for you,” Teyla says, prodding him to keep moving. “You will not be left behind.”

“I know.” That’s the only reason that he hasn’t given up yet.

“So why is there so much doubt in your mind?” She does that little raised-eyebrow thing that always accompanies the hard questions.

“There isn’t. They’ll come.” The question is _when_. He has no idea how long it’s been, if anyone is even missing them yet. And he knows from his own experience that sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you try or how good your intentions are. You might fail anyway. “They’ll come,” he repeats.

A few more steps, and then John stops dead in his tracks just before the ground falls away in front of his feet. It takes a moment to register the fact that he didn’t just nearly step off the edge of the world, but that he’s reached a deep wadi, an old dried-out riverbed, that cuts through the terrain like a ragged wound.

“Fuck.” He’ll never make it across _that_. The edges of the wadi are steep and it has been hollowed out by the wind. He might make it _down_ , but get up again on the other side? No way. Not with just one good arm and no handholds to speak of.

“One step at the time,” Teyla says by his side.

John looks at her, then down over the side, and then at her again, hoping against all hopes that she’s joking. It’s a long way down and the ground is rocky and uneven. There must have been a huge river here once, before this world became an arid wasteland. There’s no possible way he’ll make it.

But it’s not like he has much choice. The cramps are getting worse, the nausea is rolling in his gut, and he stopped sweating some time ago. If he doesn’t go for it now, he won’t even be able to make a try later.

 _One step at the time._ There’s only one way he can think of to make it down in one piece, undignified as it is.

“If anyone asks later, this never happened,” John tells Teyla. He slowly gets down on the ground until he’s sitting on his butt with his legs dangling over the edge.

She smiles in return. “Of course not.”

Even this way, it’s a difficult. There’s nothing to hold on to. He has to sit on his ass and scoot down, digging his heels in to slow his descent. Every movement makes his shoulder explode in fresh waves of pain.

Teyla matches John’s pace, walking down on light feet, and he finds it wildly unfair that even heavily pregnant, she’s still more graceful than he can ever hope to become.

His black pants are getting red-brown with fine dust and his boots are full of sand. He’s only halfway down, but his good hand is getting torn up from sand and sharp little rocks. He’s been trying not to pay attention to the horrific sunburn that’s formed on his face and forearms, but now all the dirt is aggravating the sensitive skin and it makes him want to grit his teeth. He’s pretty sure not even Rodney’s home-made sunscreen would have helped against this.

The thought of Rodney makes him lose his concentration for a moment. He reaches for a rock that looks solid, but when he moves it comes off in his hand. He loses his balance and before he knows it, his feet hit the slope in a near-run. The impact makes his teeth smash together and for every downward step he’s convinced that he’s going to fall and break his neck.

He can barely believe it when he reaches the bottom of the old riverbed and he’s somehow still on his feet. His head and his shoulder is pounding in counterpoint and he can’t breathe, but eventually he manages to stumble and stagger to a stop. He has to lean forward and rest his elbows on unsteady legs until everything stops spinning. His arm has come loose from its temporary binding and the pain is the kind he just can’t get used to.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind the infirmary right now,” he tells Teyla once he gets enough air into his raw lungs to breathe again. “No more walking. Good drugs.”

“You don’t usually admit that,” Teyla responds. She stays close, one hand hovering just behind his bad shoulder, not touching yet, just there in case he should stumble again.

“Guess not.” John hesitates, unsure if he should continue or not. But if he can’t tell Teyla these things, then who can he tell? “I’m used to taking care of myself. Don’t like being fussed over.”

“But it can be a comfort, being cared for. You always give the impression that you don’t need other people. It can be very offputting.” She smiles to soften the criticism.

“I do,” he almost chokes on the words, thinking about all the people he’s lost over the years, about how important Rodney has become and how even he seems to be slipping further out of reach for every day. “I’ve always needed people. I just never thought I could have them. It tends to end badly.”

Teyla walks up to stand in front of him, blocking his path. “That is not true, John. You have many friends willing to be there for you. You just have to let them. What about Rodney?”

“I’m not sure he even cares anymore.” Just voicing the thought makes him feel sick all over again. He never expected the thing with Rodney to last this long. They’ve never talked about it, not in terms of commitment and long-term plans. John somehow always figured the day will come when Rodney meets a woman brilliant enough to keep up with him and John will be shuffled off to the sidelines. He thought the affair with Katie Brown was it, the inevitable end, but now it seems like whatever it is they have together is about to just fizzle out and die all on its own.

Teyla frowns. “Then you don’t know him very well. There are very few people Rodney cares more about than you. Maybe if you just told him that you need him?”

“Yeah. Easier said than done.” John makes a little turn to get around her. His head is killing him and it suddenly became very hard to breathe. He can feel his pulse pounding in his hears, much faster than it ought to be. He’s almost made it across the old riverbed, but he’s been hanging on to the end of his tether for a long time and any minute now, he’ll lose his white-knuckled grip and drop to the ground.

“You don’t like to admit to weakness,” Teyla continues. “We all know that. But if you persist in going on like this, you will lead a very lonely life.”

John stops. His legs are about to give out so he decides to spare himself that indignity and just sits down instead. His stomach is rolling and he can feel the familiar sour taste in his mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”

“I am merely stating a fact, there is no need for that kind of...oh, that does not look good.”

There isn’t much in his stomach to bring up, just bile and water he can ill afford to lose. John might be exhausted and delirious, but he’s still lucid enough to know that this is a bad sign. He’s not going to make it much longer.

“I’m in trouble,” he croaks, looking up at Teyla. She’s watching him with a little wrinkle of concern between her eyebrows. “I’m not... I can’t...”

Teyla crouches down beside him, far more easily than her pregnant belly should allow for. There’s something vaguely wrong with that, John thinks. Then she reaches out an arm and points and the thought slips away. “Can you make it over there?” she asks. “There is some shade underneath that rock.”

John raises his head and tries to see it. His vision’s gone all fuzzy but he can see a darker spot on the ground on the other side of the riverbed. A large slab of stone has gotten stuck in the sand of the old riverbank, forming an overhang. It’s not big, but it might provide enough protection from the sun to keep him alive for a little longer.

He can’t get up again, his legs simply won’t hold him, so he crawls on arms and knees and tries to use the excruciating pain in his shoulder as a focus to take his mind off his frighteningly fast heartrate and the creeping suspicion that he might have to throw up again.

“You are doing very well, John,” Teyla encourages. “It is not far, you can do it.”

He can’t spare enough air for an answer, not when he has to struggle for every breath, but he does make it. It’s still stiflingly hot along the riverbank and John uses the very last of his energy to drag himself in under the rock, out of the worst sun, where he collapses in a trembling, panting heap. There are black spots dancing in his vision and Teyla is fading in and out. She needs to get into the shade too, John realises dimly. She’s been out in the heat almost as long as he has, and she has the baby to think of. He scoots to the side enough to free a little space for her.

“Here, there’s room for you too,” he tells her. His tongue trips over the words and they come out in a slur.

Teyla kneels beside him, half in and half out of the sun. It’s lower in the sky now and the rays surround her hair like a halo. “There is no need to worry about me, John,” she says.

“I do. All the time.” He gasps for breath. His heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest. “I miss you.”

She cocks her head to the side and smiles again. “It may not seem that way now, but everything will be all right.”

It’s like she’s inside his head, as if that psychic Wraith thing suddenly started working on humans too, and John actually welcomes it. He’s run out of breath to talk anyway. If she can just read his mind, it’ll just make it easier to talk to her.

_How can it be all right? I screwed up._

“They will come for you, John, just like you will come for me.”

_I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to have to wait this long._

“Shhh. I have faith in you. You just need to have faith in us in return. Rest now, everything will be all right.”

When it comes from her lips, he can almost believe it. John holds onto the words, grips them tight and holds on until the dark spots in front of his eyes start to multiply and take over his entire field of vision. Teyla’s face fades away in front of him and the hot wave rises up one last time to drag him down into darkness.

* * *

There are people talking around him, but he can’t make out the words, only the voices. One is high-pitched and anxious, the other one low and concerned. There’s a sense of urgency mixed with the overbearing heat, but it’s so far away that he can’t find the energy to care.

“Colonel? John? Can you hear me? Crap, he’s dying isn’t he? I knew we were taking too long.”

There’s a light touch at his throat, pressing against his racing pulse. “Relax, McKay. He’s still breathing.” The voice doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

“You call that breathing? Please remind me to never trust your questionable first aid skills again. Jennifer, hurry up!”

John wishes they would just be quiet and let him sleep. Then he realises that he hasn’t heard Teyla for a while and forces his eyes open. It's extremely bright and he can't see anything but two darker silhouettes outlined against the sun.

“Oh thank God, he’s waking up. Where’s the water?”

An arm snakes around John’s shoulders. “Sheppard? I’m gonna sit you up.” The sudden shift in position makes the nausea flare up again and he lets out an involuntary moan, but then he’s propped up against something broad and strong, and someone holds a bottle of water to his lips. He can actually smell it. The bottle tips and the lukewarm water trickles into his mouth. He swallows greedily, can’t get enough of it.

“Take it easy. Small sips or you’ll get sick,” the low voice, Ronon, says.

The bottle is taken away and John makes a weak attempt at protesting. His eyes are getting used to the light and the figures are beginning to take shape. He’s half sitting up, leaning against Ronon’s chest, and crouching in front of him is Rodney. He’s wearing sunglasses and a floppy-brimmed boonie hat and the bits of his face John can see are shiny with sunscreen. When he sees John focusing, he smiles weakly.

“Hi there. I hope you know that you just took ten years off my life. Imagine all the discoveries I could have made in that time! The world will suffer as a result, and it’s all your fault.”

John tries for a smile in return. It pulls at his split lip and he winces. “Hey Rodney,” he whispers. His voice is so hoarse that he barely recognises himself. “Where’s Teyla?”

Rodney’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm above the sunglasses and he whips his head around. His hand brushes over John’s forehead, stinging the burned skin. “All right. Okay. You’re burning up and you’re delirious, that’s... that’s wonderful.” He turns around again and yells, “Jennifer!”

“We’re coming!”

John makes an effort to raise his head and sees two figures approaching, hazy and swimming in the heat. Keller and Lorne. And in the distance behind them... is that a jumper? But that is... that shouldn’t be possible. Then again, it wasn’t so long ago he was seeing Russian helicopters and dead men.

“Are you guys real?” he asks anyway, just to be sure. He can’t quite believe it yet, that the rescue is finally here. Maybe he’s just imagining it.

“We’re real,” Ronon says and raises the waterbottle to his mouth again. “Drink some more.”

John does. It tastes wonderful and he laps up every drop Ronon will let him have. The next he knows, Keller is kneeling by his side, gently pushing Rodney out of the way. She has a medical bag open beside her and starts pulling things out of it. Standing behind her, poor Lorne looks sweaty and worried and generally terrible. He’s been miserable ever since Teyla went missing. John makes a mental note to try to make his XO’s life a little easier.

Keller takes his pulse and temperature and doesn’t seem pleased with the results. A lot of things are happening at the same time and John can’t quite keep track of it all. He looks around, finds Rodney who’s sitting on his other side and tries to focus on him, his fluttering hands, the stream of words spilling over his lips, too many and too fast for John to be able to pay attention to what he’s saying.

Then Keller’s hands start working on his shirtbuttons and beltbuckle and that’s a little too intimate for John’s comfort. He tries to squirm away, but his limbs are too floppy and he can’t quite control them. Before he knows it, Keller has showed a chemical coldpack down the front of his pants and tucked another two into his armpits. John lets out a small sound that’s definitely not a yelp.

“I’m sorry, Colonel. I know it’s cold, but we have to get your temperature down.” Keller gives Ronon a fourth coldpack and guides his hand to John’s sternum. “Hold that there, don’t let go.”

She takes a quick look at his shoulder and frowns when she finds the broken collarbone. John is busy trying to suck in air and not pass out again. Everything’s blurry and he can’t concentrate on anything except his screaming shoulder. When the pain finally dies down, he blinks and discovers that there’s an IV in his hand and Keller is in the process of fastening an oxygen mask over his face. Usually, he can’t stand them, but now he’s actually grateful. He doesn’t know when he could last breathe properly.

Lorne has a fold-out stretcher ready, and John isn’t sure how he feels about that. He made it this far, he should be able to go on for a little longer.

“I can walk,” he tries to say. It comes out muffled by the mask.

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Oh, I don’t doubt for a second that you’re willing to try, but you don’t _have_ to, so can you please just lie down on the nice stretcher and let us take you home so we can maybe avoid more broken bones today, hm?”

A part of him still wants to protest, because that’s what he _does_ , and he hasn’t located Teyla yet and he needs to do that before they can leave. Getting up to go look for her shouldn’t be a problem, but his limbs don’t seem to agree. Lorne and Ronon transfer him to the stretcher without much trouble, and just that simple movement makes John’s head start spinning again. He lies there and watches the sky, which is beginning to take on a faintly purple colour. The sun must be setting. Good, that means it’ll be cooler soon. Maybe he’ll be able to make it back to the gate after all. He just needs to rest for a little bit and then he’ll be good to go again.

The jumper turns out to be real after all and it makes no sense. They set him down on the floor and Lorne heads up to the cockpit. A rats’ nest of cables and wires are hanging out from the ceiling panels. Zelenka will be furious. The jumpers are his babies and he’s going to strangle whoever did this. There’s a strange whirring overtone when Lorne powers up the little vessel and she seems unsteady somehow. Or that might just be John’s head that’s still spinning.

The back hatch closes. They can’t go yet, there’s something they haven’t done, something they’ve forgotten.

“Wait.” John’s arm feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, but with a herculean effort he manages to move the oxygen mask aside so he can talk. “Teyla. We can’t leave her.”

The corners of Rodney’s mouth turn downwards. He’s taken off his hat and his hair is a sweaty mess underneath. “You really did boil your brain, didn’t you? There’s no one else out there.”

“But...”

Rodney sighs and puts the oxygen mask back on. His look softens a little bit. “Don’t worry about it. Just... just rest, okay? We’ll be home soon.”

There’s still something wrong about that statement, but John can’t figure out what it is. Then Keller sticks a needle in his arm and, God, he had no idea how much he was actually hurting until he doesn’t anymore. This time, there’s no boiling hot wave, just a soft cool nothingness that closes around him.

* * *

Atlantis is a calming, humming background noise in his head when he wakes up. John can’t feel much of anything and that’s nice for once. He doesn’t really want to open his eyes, but someone seems to be very insistent that he does. Why can’t they just let him sleep?

“Colonel?” He knows that voice. “I know you’re tired, but I need you to wake up for me for a little bit, okay? Can you do that?”

All right, he’ll give it a try. Getting his eyes open shouldn’t be that hard, he does it every morning and he’s (mostly) always managed before.

Everything is blindingly bright and he wonders if he’ll ever get out of this damn sun. He’s getting tired of it. Then someone moves to stand in front of the light, shading him, and he can see again. He’s back in Atlantis, in post-op from the looks of it, and there’s something slightly disturbing about the fact that it’s so familiar.

“Welcome back, Colonel.” Keller smiles down at him. “How do you feel?”

John’s mouth is fuzzy and dry and tastes like something died in it. “I’m... uh.” Is that his voice? It sounds terrible. He probably should try to come up with something more intelligent to say. If only his brain worked the way it’s supposed to.

“It’s all right, you’re probably a bit disoriented right now. You had to have surgery on your shoulder to get your clavicle back in the right position, but you pulled through just fine. I’m going to let you rest a little more and you’ll feel better when you wake up.”

There are things he needs to ask, things he has to do, and he can’t shake the niggling feeling that there’s something he’s forgotten, something important. But he’s blessedly pain-free and his body overrides his brain and informs it that they’re just going to enjoy that feeling for a while. His eyes slide shut again.

* * *

The next time John wakes up, he doesn’t feel better at all. Every muscle hurts and his face and hands feel hot and grotesquely swollen. He’s incredibly thirsty and his head is pounding.

He’s in the infirmary. The lights are dimmed and everything is quiet, so it must be late. Also, someone is snoring nearby, and John would recognise that rusted chainsaw of a snore anywhere. True enough, when he turns his head, Rodney’s sitting curled up in one of the plastic visitor’s chairs, arms crossed over his chest and both feet propped up against the side of John’s bed. His head is hanging down in an uncomfortable angle and he’s going to complain about his back when he wakes up. There’s a red blush of sunburn over his nose and cheeks. It’s peeling a little and John can only imagine how much it must be bothering him.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around. On the bedside table, there's a glass of water and John tries to reach for it. The moment he moves, Rodney's head shoots up and he blinks his eyes open.

“Oh. Oh, you’re awake! I should probably say ‘good morning’ but that’s not for another...” he glances at his wristwatch, “...two hours or so. Depending on your definition of ‘morning’ of course, but we both know how insanely early you like to be up.”

That’s a lot of words to be dealing with right now, so John just lets them wash over him and allows himself to take comfort in the Rodney-ness of the babbling. “Hi Rodney,” he says and gets a wide, beautiful smile in return.

“Hi. How are you feeling? Better than you look, I hope?”

John takes a moment to take stock of everything. All limbs seem to be attached. He’s wearing a nasal cannula and one of those clip things on his finger and his lungs are scratchy and raw. His shoulder aches, but it’s a distant kind of pain, likely cushioned by all sorts of good drugs. There’s an IV-line in his arm and now that he takes a closer look, his hands look about as bad as they feel, red and blistered.

“Bad?” he manages to croak out.

Rodney does a little shrug and reaches for a glass of water on the bedside table. “You look well done,” he says, clearly trying for a joke but failing to give the words the right kind of levity. “Do you want some water?”

“Yeah.”

Rodney has to hold the glass to help him drink; his arms are still so weak. The water is wonderfully cool and he wants to just gulp the whole glass down in one go, but Rodney takes it away before he has a chance.

“That’s enough for now, I don’t want you to be sick all over me.”

John smiles and winces when it pulls at the burned skin on his cheeks. “How long?” he asks. He needs to know how much time he’s lost, how much time he’s wasted.

“You’ve been out for a day, give or take.” Rodney puts the water glass away and leans forward in the chair. He looks tired, more so than usual. Has he been here the entire time? “You, uh, you had a rather impressive case of heatstroke and then there was the concussion and the smoke inhalation and the surgery and, well, all things considered, Jennifer said you needed the rest.”

John tries to wrap his mind around the information. His memories of what happened in the desert are blurry at best, with certain details standing out bright and clear, but he has no idea what actually happened and what was just a side effect of the heat and the head injury. “What happened? How did you... I thought the atmosphere on that world...”

Rodney sits up straighter in his chair and beams. “I rebuilt a jumper! In five hours!” An expression of equal parts triumph and glee creeps into his face. It’s been a long time since John saw him look like that. “It would have taken a less brilliant person the better part of two days to make those modifications but you are lucky enough to have me!”

John is more than willing to agree with him. He’s a very lucky man indeed. And he will never cease to be amazed over Rodney’s ability to come up with miracles. “That’s... that’s good work. I never thought...”

“What, you thought we wouldn’t come for you?” Rodney interrupts, looking genuinely hurt. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?”

“No,” John hurries to say. “I knew you’d come, sooner or later. I just...”

Rodney leans forward, resting his elbows on the side of John’s bed. His face is suddenly very close and John is reminded of their last kiss before this catastrophe of a mission started. He’d like to go back in time and do it properly. Or maybe just make up for it now. As soon as his lips have healed.

“Do you seriously believe there’s anything, anything at all, I wouldn’t do to get you back?” Rodney asks. “Because if you think that, Colonel, then you really don’t know me very well.”

John has to smile a little at that. “Yeah, that’s what Teyla said.”

Rodney’s eyes widen and he raises his head and looks around. “Teyla? Are you still hallucinating? I’m going to go wake Jennifer.” He rises to get out of his chair.

“No, wait.” John holds out a hand to stop him. “I meant... that’s what Teyla would say. If she... if she was here.”

It takes a moment for Rodney to calm down and take a seat again. He must be even more tired than he looks because he slumps a little in the chair, rubs a hand over his face and lets slip an exhausted little laugh. “She would, wouldn’t she? God, I miss her.”

He sits silent for a while, seemingly deep in thought. John is beginning to question this whole being awake thing; his eyelids are heavy and he’d like to go back to sleep. But first things first.

“Rodney,” he says, as gently as he can. “Why don’t you go get some rest? In your bed, not the lab or the stasis room.”

Rodney looks up. His hair is standing up a little bit in the front and he looks like he desperately needs to sleep, like that big brain of his isn’t quite firing on all cylinders. “How did you...” Then he sighs, buries his head in his hand again and yawns. “You know what, never mind.” It comes out a little muffled. “It actually sounds like a good idea right now. Are you going to be all right here?”

John can’t quite contain a yawn of his own. “I’m going to sleep too, McKay. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh. Well, okay. I’m just going to stay here until you fall asleep, then I’m going straight to bed.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope do die. Which I don’t, by the way. Who came up with that stupid saying?”

Rodney settles in, crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in the chair. He doesn’t look like he’s planning to move anytime soon but John is too tired to start an argument right now. To be honest, he doesn’t really _want_ Rodney to leave. Having him close provides that last little bit of comfort John needs to be able to close his eyes and slip back into sleep.

* * *

Of course, Rodney does not go straight to bed. He’s still there when John wakes up in the morning, snoring away and leaning precariously on the chair. John just doesn’t have the heart to wake him, so he stays quiet and tries not to think about how much his shoulder is throbbing at the moment. Whatever drugs he’s been on, they must be wearing off.

After a while, a nurse comes by to check on him and, upon discovering that he’s awake, promptly runs off to fetch Keller. The doctor turns up a few minutes later and has no qualms about waking Rodney and sending him to bed. She even goes so far as to threaten to have the burly corpsman who serves as an orderly for the day escort him out.

“How long has he been here?” John asks after Rodney has stumbled off, nearly colliding with the doorframe on his way out.

“Too long,” Keller sighs and starts the routine of checking John’s temperature and bloodpressure and of course she has to follow it up by checking his pupils with her little penlight. “It’s not that I don’t like his company, but he can be a little...”

“Annoying?” John says, blinking the black spots out of his eyes when she’s done.

“I was going to say overwhelming.” She smiles. “How do you feel?”

“Not bad,” John lies. He’s been trying not to grit his teeth against the pain in his shoulder.

“I see.” Keller gives him a knowing look. “You’re about due for another round of painkillers and I’m going to ask a nurse to take a look at that sunburn.”

He thinks about asking when he can get out of here, but he decides to save it for later. “Thank you, doc,” he says instead.

Colonel Carter stops by after breakfast to get a preliminary report; he’ll hand in the real one later when his hands have healed enough to type. John tells her as much as he can remember. Most of what happened before the explosion is pretty clear, but his walk through the desert is not. He doesn’t go into any great detail when it comes to his ghosts. That would probably just lead to a couple of more sessions of mandatory counselling and John really doesn’t need a shrink to tell him how screwed up he is.

When he’s finished, they both go quiet. Carter hands him his water glass and this time, he can hold it all by himself. At least there’s progress.

“So, I guess it could have gone better,” he says, just to break the silence. “It was pretty much a waste of time from beginning to end.”

“We won’t give up,” Carter says, with a smile that’s probably meant to be encouraging. “We’ve beaten worse odds.”

“But we’re back to square one again. That was the last lead we had to finding Teyla.”

She goes quiet again and gives him a calculating look, like she knows something he doesn’t and is trying to decide whether to tell him or not.

“We received a transmission from the Genii,” she says eventually. “They say they might have information and they want to know what it’s worth to us.”

“What? When?” John sits up in his bed. His shoulder and head both protest, but he ignores it. “We have to find out what they know.”

Carter shakes her head. “They will contact us again. There’s nothing we can do but wait. Until then, I need you to rest and get well again.”

John lies back again and closes his eyes. His little stroll through the desert left him with the raw memories of all the people he’s failed through the years. Teyla won’t end up as one of them. There’s nothing more he can do for Sumner and Ford and Holland, but until they get absolute proof that Teyla is dead, he will not stop looking.

Come to think of it, there is one more thing he can do. With a little lump of anxiety in his stomach that he turns to Carter and says, under his breath, “I need to speak to my brother”.

She studies him for a moment, and then she nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Carter pulls strings without asking any questions and John loves her for it. The next day, he’s been set up with a secure video-link to the Milky Way and pulls the privacy curtains shut around his bed, waiting for the control room to patch him through to Dave.

It takes longer than he’d like and he’s had more than enough time to start getting worried when Dave finally shows up on his screen. He’s sitting at his desk in his office at home, the one that used to belong to Dad. He looks good, dressed casually in a polo shirt, and with the kind of healthy tan you get from spending time outside instead of on a tanning bed.

John clearly doesn’t look nearly as good.

“My God, John, you look terrible. What the hell did you do to yourself?”

Okay, so the video-call probably wasn’t the best idea. At least not when he’s looking like something out of a horror movie. John ducks his head and goes for a joke. “Word of advice. If your travel agent offers you a budget vacation somewhere warm and sunny, don’t take him up on it.”

Dave is not even a little bit amused. “I can’t believe you. You look... are you in a _hospital?_ What happened?”

“I’m all right, it looks worse than it is.” And apparently he’s managed to start off another conversation on the wrong foot. “I’m... it’s, uh, classified...”

“Naturally,” Dave interrupts, looking sour.

“...but I’ll be fine. I’m getting out of here later today.”

“Okay.” Dave nods, clearly trying to get his head around that fact. “All right.”

There’s a brief uncomfortable silence while both of them try to figure out what to say next. John was never any good at this.

“So. What have you been up to?” he finally says.

Dave shrugs. “I was out hiking with the girls when I got the call. We had to hurry back. I thought at first...” he trails off and there’s something in his voice that John can’t quite identify, but sounds a little bit like fear. It strikes him that his brother probably wouldn’t expect any good news to come out of an urgent call from the United States Air Force.

He wants to say sorry, apologise for worrying Dave, but he doesn’t know how. Instead he tries to continue the current awkward conversation topic. “You... um. You do that often?”

“As often as I can. Renée’s not much for the outdoors, but the kids love it. We went fishing last weekend.”

John met his niece Shannon once when she was only a few days old, but he’s never met Sophia. They weren’t at the wake and the funeral. The only thing he can remember about Dave’s wife is that she’s nice and very polite, well-polished if a bit distant. He barely knows his closest family. What does that say about him?

“You didn’t use to be the outdoorsy type either,” John says. “Not... back then.” John was the one who took after Mom in that, the one who used to live in the stables and spend all his summers riding horses and riding his bike.

There’s actually a hint of a smile on Dave’s face when he answers. “Well, I got over it. When Shannon was born I remembered all those things Mom used to do with us when we were growing up. It was... nice. I want the girls to have that.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, it is.” Dave’s face softens while he talks about his daughters, but then he takes a deep breath and straightens up. “I guess it won’t do much good to ask what you’ve been up to?”

“No, not really.” John wants to tell him, has wanted to ever since they had their long talk after the funeral. He said as much as he possibly could, but he knows it wasn’t enough. “I wish I could...” he begins, and then swallows the rest of the sentence. “Things have been a bit rough here lately,” is what he settles for. It’s an understatement, but it’s the best he can come up with at the moment.

Dave snorts. “Yeah, I can tell.”

There’s more silence. John is beginning to think that this entire call was a mistake. Then Dave leans forward and sighs. He runs one hand through his hair, a heartachingly familiar mannerism he must have picked up from Dad.

“John, why are you calling? It wasn’t just to chat.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He doesn’t know what to say, just keeps thinking about what Dave’s ghost told him in the desert and he’s terrified to bring that old ugliness out in the open.

“So tell me.” When John keeps hesitating, Dave bursts out, “John, I’m your _brother._ “

He’s going to have to say it. John takes a deep breath and asks the question that’s been on his mind for a long time now.

“Are we okay?”

Dave looks a little puzzled. “Yes. Yes, of course we are. Why do you ask that?”

“I’ve been thinking. I shouldn’t have left like I did. I put the company, Dad, everything, on your shoulders and that wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.” There, he said it. John feels a little lightheaded and chalks it up to the smoke inhalation, even if Keller took him off the oxygen this morning.

Dave goes quiet and there’s something distant in his eyes, like he’s remembering a time long past. When John looks closely, he can still see the faint traces of the kid with the button downs and the sneer.

“I was angry, for a long time,” Dave says at last. There’s a little wrinkle between his eyebrows, but it’s more sad than resentful. “And I think I was a bit jealous too, that you were strong enough to walk out the door. I never would have dreamed about saying ‘no’ to Dad.”

“And now?” John catches himself holding his breath.

“Now...” Dave pauses, looks to the side of his desk, where John remembers he keeps a photo of his daughters. “I think we’ve both grown up a lot since then, don’t you? Besides, I’m good at this. It might not have been what I dreamed about when I was eighteen but... I bet what you’re doing right now wasn’t exactly part of your dreams either, am I right?”

The relief punches a sharp little bark of a laugh out of John. “Not really. It’s... it’s been tough. But I’ve seen some incredible things. Met some pretty awesome people.” He doesn’t say anything about the people he’s lost.

“I wish you could tell me,” Dave says.

“I know. I want to, but... “ John wouldn’t even know where to _start_ , doesn’t know how Dave would handle the truth of what he’s actually doing. But Dave’s right, they _are_ brothers and he does have the right to know, eventually. ”As soon as all this gets declassified, you’ll be the first one to know, I promise.”

Dave nods. “Good enough.” He looks down and fiddles with something on his desk and then continues, “John, I’m... glad we had this talk. I’ve been thinking too, lately. It’s been too long and I don’t want us to grow apart any more than we already have. I want the girls to get to know their uncle.”

John thinks about the two little girls he only knows from photographs. Damn, he’s spent more time together with _Rodney’s_ niece than he has with his own. “I’d like that,” he says, and he means it. “I’m just a little busy right now. There are people here counting on me. I can’t let them down.”

“I get that,” Dave says. He hides his disappointment well, but it’s there on his face. “Well, when you’ve taken care of... whatever you have to take care of where you are, maybe you can take some time off, come here for a vacation?” he’s talking slowly, almost a little hesitantly, like he’s trying the idea on for size. “We could all go out together for a weekend, maybe take the horses and bring some camping gear? Like we used to do with Mom when we were kids.”

John remembers those summer weekends, just him and Dave and Mom, riding along little forest paths under bright green leaves, making camp by small streams, fighting mosquitoes and waking up to birdsong. In a lot of ways, that was the last time everything was perfectly right with the world. After Mom died, they never did it again.

“We’ll do that,” John says. “I don’t know when, but we’ll do it. Soon, I hope.”

“Good.” Dave smiles. “Take care of yourself, Johnny.” He hesitates again. “You have friends there, right? You’re not alone in that... that tough thing?”

There’s been a steady stream of people coming by his hospital bed since yesterday morning. Rodney and Ronon bring their meals to the infirmary and stay until they get thrown out. Carter drops by with updates on the Genii situation as often as she can. Both Lorne and Zelenka have visited more than once. Dave doesn’t have anything to worry about there.

“I’m not alone,” he says.

* * *

Rodney’s in a staff meeting when John is released from the infirmary after dinner, but Ronon is there to follow him back to his room. Usually, he’d protest and insist that he’s fine to go on his own, but he’s still a little shaky on his legs and he’s grateful to have Ronon by his side, ready to take his weight if he should stumble.

Dave has a point, and so did hallucinatory Teyla. John has a lot of friends here. Maybe it’s time he started acknowledging that. He’s been taking care of himself for as long as he can remember, but it’s not like he’s doing a very good job of it anyway.

John is a little bit winded by the time they make it to his room. Exertion still makes him cough and even though Keller assured him it’s only temporary, it’s still irritating. He heads for the bathroom, pours himself a glass of water, and drinks it slowly in small sips. Ronon sits down on the chair by his bed and waits.

John studies his own face in the bathroom mirror and doesn’t quite recognise himself, even if it’s a little better now than it was when he first woke up. The split lip is healing and the blisters on his cheeks and forehead aren’t so bad anymore. It’s still not a pretty sight.

“You okay?” Ronon asks when he comes out.

John thinks about it for a split second and then decides to let his guard down, just this once. This is _Ronon_ , the one person who always has his back, no matter what. There’s no one he trusts more with his weaknesses.

“I’m pretty fucking scared, actually,” he says and nervously waits for the reaction.

If Ronon’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. Instead he just gives a short nod. “Me too.” He looks up at John with a frustrated scowl. “All this waiting’s the worst. Wish someone could find Michael and point me at him.”

John sinks down on the edge of the bed. Now that he’s started admitting to all the things he doesn’t want to think of, it’s like he can’t stop. “What if we’re too late? What if we don’t find her in time?”

Ronon’s quiet for a long time and a brief glimpse of resignation flashes over his face. John realises he’s probably spent all these weeks thinking the same thing, long enough to be prepared to accept the possibility.

“Then we find Michael and we make him pay,” Ronon says at last.

A simple answer to a difficult question. Ronon’s used to dealing with loss, knows how to take grief and anger and turn it into action. In a way, John is jealous of that ability. On the other hand, it makes him so sad on Ronon’s behalf. If there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve to lose any more loved ones, it’s him.

The door chimes, interrupting them, and Rodney steps inside. He looks tired and harried, and is clearly in a bad mood. “Sorry, the meeting ran late. Seriously, I work with morons. Sometimes I think I’d get more done if I just fired them all and replaced them with trained monkeys.”

Ronon stands. “You two should talk,” he says under his breath, low enough that only John can hear. Then he ducks his head and disappears out the door.

“So, what was that about?” Rodney asks, rubbing his hands together.

“Nothing,” John answers. “We were just talking.”

He knows he should tell Rodney the same thing he just told Ronon, but he finds that it’s much more difficult. The words just won’t come.

“Oh, okay. Are you all right? Did you eat? I could go get us something if you want. I, um, I told Jennifer I’d stay here and help you out until you’re better, you know, with... buttons and stuff. That’s probably going to be difficult with your hands.” Rodney stays by the door, keeping his distance, and John’s heart falls a little. Before, in the infirmary just after he woke up, Rodney couldn’t stay away. Now it’s like he can’t wait to get out of here.

“I already ate, McKay,” John answers. “And I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“All right.” Rodney looks like he’s already halfway out the door. “I’ll just let you get some rest then. So, um, good night.” He begins to turn.

“Wait!” John didn’t expect _that_ to come tumbling out, Either he’s more tired than he thought, or his mouth knows something he doesn’t. But Rodney stops and turns his head, looking almost a little hopeful. That does it.

“Stay?” John asks, and he hates how needy he sounds, but Rodney doesn’t seem to mind. Rodney closes the door and comes inside, walks up to the bed and sits down beside John. He keeps rubbing his hands together, like he’s not sure what to do with them.

“Is there anywhere I can touch you that doesn’t hurt?” he asks.

In truth, there isn’t, but John won’t tell him that. “Don’t worry about it,” he says instead and Rodney seems to relax a little bit.

“You almost died, you know,” he says quietly. “I thought we were going to die too, but when we made it through the transporter and you weren’t right behind us...” Rodney lets a shaky little laugh slip out and holds up his hand, thumb and forefinger half and inch apart. “I was _this_ close to punching Ronon in the face.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I _know_ it wasn’t his fault. Still, I might have said some things I shouldn’t have, which,” Rodney raises a finger, “I already apologised for, by the way.”

“And then you rebuilt a jumper.”

“In _five hours_!” Rodney crows. He’s clearly not going to let that go anytime soon, and under the circumstances, John is willing to allow him some bragging room. Then Rodney goes grim-faced and serious again. “Just... try not to almost die again, please? I don’t think I could handle losing you too.”

John reaches out to take his hand, ignoring how it stings his burned skin. “I’m not planning on it.”

Rodney gives him a long, soft-eyed look, and then leans in to brush his lips against John’s temple. It’s gentle and tender and makes the tight knot John has been carrying around in his chest for so long now loosen up a little bit.

* * *

John wakes up a few hours later, alone. He doesn’t know if he actually expected Rodney to stay or if it was just wishful thinking, but it leaves him with a strange aching in his chest that has nothing to do with his irritated lungs. His first instinct is to just try to get comfortable and go back to sleep, but after he’s tossed and turned for twenty minutes, it’s pretty obvious it’s not going to happen.

He gets out of bed and finds a pair of sweats that he can manage to get into even with his clumsy hands. He can’t manage to tie his shoelaces, but it’s not like he usually bothers with that anyway.

It’s close to midnight and the city is quiet, save for the occasional night owl. John stops by Rodney’s room and lab first, just in case, but they’re both empty. Of course. He sighs and heads down to the stasis room instead, wondering what he’s going to say and what he’s going to do. Ronon’s right, they do need to talk, but John has no idea _how._

The door to the stasis room is open, and there’s a faint light coming from inside. John walks the last steps as silently as he can. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to sneak up on Rodney, just that it feels very important that his arrival goes unnoticed.

John hasn’t been down here since they locked Carson away, but it’s pretty obvious that Rodney has more or less turned it into a second home. He’s set up a fold-out table with several computers and there’s a cot with a blanket and a pillow tucked away in a corner. There are several empty coffee mugs on the table and the floor around it is littered with empty powerbar and snack-food wrappers. The whole room stinks of desperation and misery.

Rodney’s sitting hunched over the table, head buried in his arms. He’s fast asleep. There’s tons of information on the computer screens, dancing, spinning double helixes and medical research way beyond what John can grasp.

He can’t bring himself to look at Carson’s stasis chamber. If he did, he’d probably want to join Rodney down here.

John tries to tread softly when he enters the room, but Rodney must have been sleeping lightly, because just as John’s going to shake his shoulder, he starts awake, blinking owlishly.

“What? Ow, my back!” he turns around and his red-rimmed eyes take on a look of alarm. “What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t find you anywhere else,” John says and holds his hand out. “C’mon McKay. It’s bedtime.”

Rodney looks away, at the stasis chambers, at the computer screens, and sighs. “I guess. I thought I was onto something but...” he makes a frustrated gesture. “I can't wrap my head around this. Carson spent his entire _life_ studying this and I can’t learn it fast enough.” There’s so much sorrow and defeat in his voice and John thinks that he should have come down here long ago to drag Rodney away from the impossible task he’s assigned himself.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You rebuilt a jumper in five hours. You can’t be an expert at everything, Rodney.”

“Well, I _should_ be.” Rodney stands up so fast that the chair falls backwards and clatters to the floor. “I’m useless like this!” He starts pacing back and forth and John watches, unsure what to say, what to do.

“Rodney...” he starts, but Rodney isn’t listening.

“I mean, how many times has he saved my life? And I can’t do _anything_ to help him.” He sounds so exhausted, so miserable, and John can’t stand it.

“McKay!” he moves into Rodney’s path to stop him. “We can find Michael, okay? We can find the son of a bitch and _force_ him to give us the cure.” Suddenly, he’s angrier than he can remember being in a long time. Michael has stolen so much already and it doesn’t matter how he came to be and what reasons he has for doing what he does; he needs to be _stopped._

Rodney stands still, hands limp by his sides. He looks exhausted, pale under the sunburn and unshaven and so very sad. Then he leans forward without a word, presses his forehead against John’s good shoulder. At first, John doesn’t know what to do, but then Rodney emits a small soft noise that sounds like he’s trying to hold back a sob. That does it. John wraps his arms around him and holds him tight and he can’t help but think that while Rodney might need this, John does too. They’ve barely touched each other lately, not out of bed, and while sex has been a necessary outlet, this is almost even more important.

“I’m just so tired,” Rodney murmurs into John’s shirt.

“Me too, buddy,” John answers. “Me too.”

He doesn’t know how long they stand like that, or who’s holding onto who the most, but it’s more restful than any sleep John has had lately. It’s true, what he told hallucinatory Teyla in the desert. He’s always needed people, he just never thought he could have them.

It looks like he was wrong.

It’s Rodney who moves first. He ducks out of the embrace and turns his head a little to wipe at something that might possibly be moisture on his cheeks.

“Okay, so that was a little embarrassing.” He gives a trembling little laugh. “That was so not what I meant to do.”

“No one here but us,” John says. He’s feeling a little shaky himself but still _better_ somehow, even though the current situation really hasn’t changed. “It’ll be all right,” he says, and it’s almost like he can believe it now. “We’ll find a way to fix all this. But I don’t think we can do it on our own.”

“I guess you’re right.” Rodney glances at his makeshift desk and the screens and notebooks there. “I just got so caught up in all this, I lost track of everything else. History repeats itself.”

He's thinking about Doranda, John can tell, and that makes him grab Rodney's hand and hold on. ”Hey, it's going to be okay,” he says. ”But I... I need you.” Saying the words makes his breath hitch a little, but the world doesn't end or anything.

Rodney swallows and steps closer. ”God, John, me too. I don't even know how to do this without you anymore.”

John leans his forehead against Rodney's, an imitation of an Athosian greeting. It's late and he's so tired he can barely think. Rodney looks like he crossed that line long ago. ”Let's go back to bed,” he says. ”We need to rest. Maybe there'll be news from the Genii in the morning.”

Rodney nods and leans in to brush his lips against John's. It's almost like the last kiss they shared before the mission, but it's still different. This time, Rodney is _here_ , not lost somewhere in his own thoughts.

They power down the computers and Rodney sends one last glance at Carson's stasis chamber. Then they go back to John's room, walking as close together as they possibly can without actually holding hands.

Rodney stays the night.

\- fin -

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Off-world injury or being pitted against the elements, confrontation with something from John's past, John being forced to rely on others for help.


End file.
